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Bristly

adjective
1.
Very irritable.  Synonyms: prickly, splenetic, waspish.  "He became prickly and spiteful" , "Witty and waspish about his colleagues"
2.
Having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc..  Synonyms: barbed, barbellate, briary, briery, bristled, burred, burry, prickly, setaceous, setose, spiny, thorny.  "Bristly shrubs" , "Burred fruits" , "Setaceous whiskers"



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"Bristly" Quotes from Famous Books



... arms; but no, she wouldn't let me! Made herself so heavy, quite a hundredweight, and caught hold where she could with her hands, so that one couldn't get them off! Well, so I began stroking her head. It was so bristly,—just like a hedgehog! So I stroked and stroked, and she quieted down at last. I soaked a bit of rusk and gave it her. She understood that, and began nibbling. What were we to do with her? We took her; took her, and began feeding and feeding her, and she got ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... waited for her to start the conversation, and talked at Mr. Boltwood rather than directly to her. But the bristly man spat at her as ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... southward, with a yellow landscape before me, extending as far as the fringe of the desert, as yellow as if all those hills were covered with lions' skins sewn together, sometimes a pointed yellow peak would rise out of the midst of them, like the bristly ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... but he appears rather bigger, on account of his long curled wool, which makes him appear to the eye much larger than he really is. This wool is very fine and very thick, and is of a dark chesnut colour, as are likewise his bristly hairs, which are also curled, and so long, that the bush between his horns often falls over his eyes, and hinders him from seeing before him; but his sense of hearing and smelling is so exquisite as in some measure to supply the want of the other. A pretty large bunch ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... swung: Some fierce with single ears and eyes, Some dwarfish, some of monstrous size: Some with their dark necks long and thin With hair upon the knotty skin: Some with wild locks, some bald and bare, Some covered o'er with bristly hair: Some tall and straight, some bowed and bent With every foul disfigurement: All black and fierce with eyes of fire, Ruthless and stern and swift to ire: Some with the jackal's jaw and nose, Some faced ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... Polypodium, caudice 12-15 pedali, partibus novellis densissime ferrugineo-tomentosis; frondibus subtus glauco-albidis. The caudex is altogether similar in structure to that of Alsophyla, equally furnished with strong black bristly radicles ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... beside their station took, The maidens with them, and with these the cook; When one huge wooden bowl before them stood, Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food; With bacon, mass saline! where never lean Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen: When from a single horn the party drew Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new; When the coarse cloth she saw, with many a stain, Soiled by rude hands who cut and came again— She could not breathe, but with a ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being knocked about, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... men she had never seen before. Old men, young men, and boys, all on their rough-coated horses, and how they came indoors, and what a noise they made all talking together in their big deep voices. They looked terrible men, so tall and brown and fierce, with their rough bristly beards; and they all spoke in such funny tones to her, as if they were trying ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... bristly hair, and the hair inclined to curl, signifies one lustful, licentious, and fit for copulation. Thighs with but little hair, and those soft and slender, show the person to be reasonably chaste, and ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... are about the middle height, broad-chested, broad- shouldered, "thick set," very strongly built, the arms and legs short, thick, and muscular, the hands and feet large. The bodies, and specially the limbs, of many are covered with short bristly hair. I have seen two boys whose backs are covered with fur as fine and soft as that of a cat. The heads and faces are very striking. The foreheads are very high, broad, and prominent, and at first sight give one the impression ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... For myself on these occasions I like a bit of a run as an early refresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle of the island there were not three yards of level to be found, and so as Coppinger proceeded to go through some sort of dumb-bell exercises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, I followed his example. Coppinger has done a good deal of roughing it in his time, but being a doctor of medicine amongst other things—he takes out a new degree of some sort on an average every other year—he is great on health ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... you do, Son?" Daddy asked, smoothing the bristly little head. "I said could I take mine home," Jimmie mumbled, fishing a tight-folded sheet of paper ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... trees, their branches not clothed with leaves from proper twigs but with a reddish bristly growth protruding directly from their surfaces, made a partial wall for the pocket-sized meadow. That screen reached a rocky cleft where the mist curled in a long tongue through a wall twice Travis' height. If the browsers could be maneuvered into taking ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... contrast in his own person. Otherwise the Gaul did not resemble him in a single feature, and he might even have refused to compare his soft, wavy beard with the harsh, almost bristly one of the barbarian. And what a defiant, almost evil expression his countenance wore when—perhaps because his wound ached—he closed his lips more firmly! The children who so willingly let him, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... more provoking than downright rebellion could have been; and I secretly agreed with my friends that the attempt would prove a complete failure, while impelled, I hardly could tell how, to persevere with redoubled efforts. Jack's uncouth bristly hair fell in a straight mass over one of the finest foreheads ever seen, and concealed it. I happened one day to put aside this mass, for the benefit of his sight, and was so struck with the nobly expansive brow, that I exclaimed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... not long before he came upon a German bookseller's, and, with his customary rapid decision, he entered and asked for the manager. The clerk to whom he addressed himself led the way to an inner office, where our hero was confronted with a little fat, bristly man, with a keen though kindly face of undoubted Teutonic type. Without pausing to consider his words, he plunged into the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... by Peter Schlemihl strides. Besides, his regular teacher was something like a wild boar. He had proceeded to dragoon Gard as if he were a lad. And Herr Keller's person was offensive. He exhaled a smell unpleasant if scholastic. Dressed in a soiled, shiny, black garb, and with a bristly mustache and beard which often showed egg of a morning, he talked blatantly of having been in Paris as a soldier in '70. It was his one excursion out ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice, and evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His shaggy head lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike, hung almost to his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his rough, bristly hair was beaded with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Her masculine features repelled me every time I lifted my eyes towards her face to listen to what she said to me. She was tall and coarse like a trooper; her complexion was yellow, her hair black, her eyebrows long and thick, and her chin gloried in a respectable bristly beard: to complete the picture, her hideous, half-naked bosom was hanging half-way down her long chest; she may have been about fifty. The servant was a stout country girl, who did all the work of the house; the garden was a square of some thirty feet, which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... certainly the ugliest man I had ever seen. He was very short, but thick-set, and he had a bad limp. He wore a singlet and a pair of trousers that had been white, but were now filthy, and, perched on a shock of bristly, grey hair, an old tweed deer-stalker. It would have been grotesque on any Chinese, but on him it was outrageous. His broad, square face was very flat as though it had been bashed in by a mighty fist, and it was deeply pitted with smallpox; but the most revolting thing in him was a very pronounced ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... features, as yet but roguishly indicated, will have become set and hidebound; their soft little snouts will be ringed, and hard as a fifth hoof; their dainty little ears—veritable silk purses—will have grown long and bristly: in short, they will have lost that ineffable tender bloom of young life which makes them quite a touching sight to-day. Strange that loss of charm which comes with development in us all, pigs included. A tendency to pigginess, as in these youngsters, a tendency to manhood ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... little, wiry man with a bristly, protruding chin. She could see that, even in the starlight. There was something about the point of that stubby chin that she shrank from inexpressibly. He was not a pleasant man to look upon, and even his voice was unprepossessing. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... late in the morning, and arose barely in time for a late breakfast with Hester. Rayel seemed cheerful enough and took more than ordinary interest in his surroundings. When we had risen from the table he led me aside and directed my attention to a short, stout man with a bristly growth of close-cropped black hair, a low forehead and shaggy eyebrows, who was leaning lazily against the ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... the pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the dingy little Mission House in Lima Street that very sense of richness and grandeur which Mark had anticipated. The Bishop's pink plump hands of which he made such use contrasted with the lean, scratched, and grimy hands of his father; the Bishop's hair white and glossy made his father's bristly, badly cut hair look more bristly and worse cut than ever, and the Bishop's voice ripe and unctuous grew more and more mellow as his father's became harsher and more assertive. Mark found himself thinking of some lines in The Jackdaw of Rheims about a cake of soap worthy ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... on the table, runs after her with them.] Oh, THANK you. And oh, please, if I must have one of his sons, I should like a fair one that doesn't shave, with soft hair and a beard. I couldn't bear being kissed by a bristly person. [She runs out, the Manager bowing as she passes. ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw

... nice bed to sleep in. In such a bed Mme. du Barry might have stretched her arms and yawned, or the beautiful Duchesse de Mazarin might have held her morning levee. A British general, with his bronzed face and bristly mustache, would look a little strange under that blue-silk canopy, with rosy cherubs dancing overhead on the flowered ceiling. His top-boots and spurs stood next to a Louis Quinze toilet-table. His leather belts and field-glasses lay on the polished boards beneath the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... to soften the expression of his eyes, a long, prominent, dull-red scar divided one of his cheeks, his mustache was not heavy enough to hide a hideous hare-lip; while a ragged beard, and a head of stiff, bristly red hair, formed a setting which intensified rather than embellished the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... some artificial ones at my little milliner's, and be fine as long as I like; so you are welcome to your useful, bristly old wheat," said Ethel, rather nettled by the look ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... them keenly with an increased interest. They donned the tunics. Charley's body was shortly garbed as that of a lieutenant of the West Coast Infantry Regiment, but the rest of his figure was not in keeping with his wild red hair, his bristly jowls awaiting the week-end shave, his open shirt and his rough working trousers. Mac was in the Manawatu Mounted Rifles, but had not risen above the humble, though estimable rank of trooper, and his tunic fell far ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... strength. There was nothing a Scanlon brother wouldn't do, and do well, for two dollars and fifty cents a day. Mind and muscle were both yours—Scanlon mind and muscle—for this paltry and insignificant sum; and the consul, in his quandary, welcomed the stout, bristly haired pair as though they ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... "nobody at the wheel, land dead ahead and breakers under the bows. Looks to me as if 'twas liable to be a short v'yage and a lively one. But the for'ard lookout says all's well and he ought to know; he's had more experience aboard gift-shop ships, I presume likely, than I have. What's those bristly things stickin' up along shore there—eel grass ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... me as if I were a servant asking for higher wages. The speaker, a fat man with a bristly moustache and a red necktie, drew ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... bigger and broader, it seemed to her, than any man she had ever spoken to before, took away her senses. As he came up to her she involuntarily shrank back; and when he stooped to kiss her, the novel sensation of his bristly beard against her face, the strong scent of tobacco, and the sense that she was unwelcome, all contributed towards complete self-betrayal. Dizzy from her voyage; faint, sick, and unhinged, she almost pushed him away from her and sank down on a hall-chair with ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... happiness; they bask, and sing, and rejoice in dancing and delight. The kid nibbling the tender grass under the shade of the great trees is as poetic an object as the shelter that it loves; the fierce boar is as rough as the tangled brakes through which he loves to run his huge bristly back; the eagle is as proud and lofty as the sky-piercing crags on which he perches as his home; the lion is as majestic as the arching vaults of the caves where he makes his den; but the wolf, the fox, and the ferret seek the darkness that conforms to their ugly deeds; fear ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... of New York. Observe him as he stands with huge palmated horns ready for action, his vast nostrils snuffing up the scent coming from afar; his eyes dilated, and ears moving, watching for a foe; his bristly mane erect; his large body supported on his somewhat thick but agile limbs, standing fully six feet six inches in height at the shoulder, above which rise the head and antlers. The creature's muzzle is very broad, protruding, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... should not be allowed to remain till the compactness of the head is broken, but should always be cut while the 'curd,' as the flowering mass is termed, is entire, or before bristly, leafy points make their appearance through it. In trimming the head, a portion of the stalk is left, and a few of the leaves immediately surrounding the head; the extremities being cut off a little below ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundered, and had double chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down in his face, like a finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see that. And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Leaves of what is call'd the Artichoke be pointing inwards, and lie close at the Top, for then the Bottom will be large and full; but if you find many of the Leaves of the Artichoke spread from the Top, then the Choke, or bristly part is shot so much, that it has drawn out much of the Heart of the Artichoke; and as the Flower comes forward, the more that grows, the thinner will be the Bottom, which is ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... and capable detective named Gilder, was standing on the green bank waiting for the coroner, talking to Patrick Royce, whose big shoulders and bristly beard and hair towered above him. This was the more noticeable because Royce walked always with a sort of powerful stoop, and seemed to be going about his small clerical and domestic duties in a heavy and humbled style, like a ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... sallow man—all cobblers are; and had a strong bristly beard—all cobblers have. His face was a queer, good-tempered, crooked-featured piece of workmanship, ornamented with a couple of eyes that must have worn a very joyous expression at one time, for they sparkled yet. The man was sixty, by years, and Heaven knows how old by imprisonment, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... and his face would then wear a sad and wearied look. But when the time came for him to give an opinion on what he had heard, or to tell a story which something 'reminded him of,' his face would lighten up with its homely, rugged smile, and he would run his fingers through his bristly black hair, which would stand out in every direction like that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... Burke arises, like a cheeta or hunting leopard coupled in a tiger-chase with a German poodle. To think, in a merciful spirit, of the jungle—barely to contemplate, in a temper of humanity, the incomprehensible cane-thickets, dark and bristly, into which that bloody cheeta will drag ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... the King, and the prickers advancing into the wood, presently afterwards reared the enormous brute. Sallying forth, and freaming furiously, he was instantly assailed by the mastiffs; but, notwithstanding the number of his assailants, he made light of them, shaking them from his bristly hide, crushing them beneath his horny feet, thrusting at them with his sharpened tusks, and committing terrible ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... might be a lead. But an hour later, when I'd had a chance to look him over, I was for passin' Stukey up. For he sure was disappointin' to view. One of these thin, sallow, dyspeptic parties, with deep lines down either side of his mouth, a bristly, jutty little mustache, and ratty ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... saw that amazing human document (I even threw it overboard later). There he sat, with his hands reposing on his knees, bald, squat, gray, bristly, recalling a wild boar somehow; and by his side towered an awful mature, white female with rapacious nostrils and a cheaply ill-omened stare in her enormous eyes. She was disguised in some semi-oriental, vulgar, fancy ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... air, for freeing it from foreign matter, or for warming it if it is too cold; whereas the nostrils appear to have been designed for this very purpose. Their narrow and winding channels are covered with bristly hairs which filter or sift and arrest the dust and other impurities in the air; and in the channels of the nostrils and back of them the air is warmed or sufficiently tempered before it reaches the lungs. Moreover it can be felt that the lungs fill more readily ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... wondered Molly on her pillow. "His mustache is not bristly like so many of them. Sam never gave me such a look at Hoosic Junction. No.... You can't come with me.... Get off your horse.... The ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... reappear when she had made Peregrine wash his face and hands, smooth the hair ruffled in his nap, freshly tying his little cravat and the ribbons on his shoes and at his knees. To make his hair into anything but elf locks, or to obliterate the bristly tuft that made him like Riquet, was impossible, illness had made him additionally lean and sallow, and his keen eyes, under their black contracted brows and dark lashes, showed all the more the curious ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was advancing from the opposite end of the glade. This was a man of the largest and most sinewy mould, his face tanned by sun and wind to a uniform hard ruddy brown, and his shaggy black hair untrimmed, as well as his dark bristly beard. His jerkin was of rough leather, crossed by a belt, sustaining sword and dagger; a bow and arrows were at his back; a huge quarter-staff in his hand; and his whole aspect was that of a ferocious outlaw, whose hand was against ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... prejudices; but if I were pressed hard for my proofs of their correctness, I should make but a poor show in the witness-box. Most assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced by the kind of food habitually depended upon. I am persuaded that a too exclusively porcine diet gives a bristly character to the beard and hair, which is borrowed from the animal whose tissues these stiff-bearded compatriots of ours have too largely assimilated. I can never stray among the village people of our windy capes without now and then coming upon a human being who looks ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... vertex, or becoming cylindrical, 3 to 8.5 cm. in diameter: tubercles sharply quadrangular-conical, with densely woolly axils: radial spines 15 to 30, white, very slender (bristly) and radiant, sometimes coarse capillary, 4 to 7 mm. long, interwoven with those of neighboring tubercles and so covering the whole plant; central spines 2 to 4, robust and straight, erect or divergent, whitish or reddish, black-tipped, ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter

... region. It is covered with hair, which, in both sexes, extends well up the lower belly. This is known as pubic hair, and in general corresponds in quality and quantity to the hair upon the individual head, being coarse or fine, soft or bristly, to match, the head covering, in each case. This hair is usually more or less curly, and forms a covering an inch or more in depth over the whole pubic region, extending back between the thighs slightly beyond the rectum. In occasional cases this hair is straight and silky, and sometimes ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... his bristly head. "I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will please her for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... are the blue or white flowers of the FIELD FORGET-ME-NOT, SCORPION GRASS, or MOUSE-EAR (M. arvenis), whose stems and leaves are covered with bristly hairs. It blooms from August to July in dry places, even on hillsides, an unusual locality in which to find a member of this moisture-loving clan. All the flowers remain long in bloom, continually forming new buds on a lengthening stem, and leaving ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... years looked as though he could give a splendid account of himself in a physical contest. His hands were large and bony, his face more square than either round or long, and his forehead high. He had a vigorous growth of short-clipped, iron-gray hair, and a bristly iron-gray mustache, very short, keen, intelligent blue-gray eyes; a florid complexion; and even-edged, savage-looking teeth, which showed the least bit in a slightly wolfish way when he smiled. However, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... of getting at, when he carried matters quite too high. "Droves of six hundred swine"—I have seen (by reading in those old books) certain noble gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I think, driving them openly, captured by the stronger hand; and have heard the short querulous squeak of the bristly creatures: "What is the use of being a pig at all, if I am to be stolen in this way, and surreptitiously made into ham?" Pigs do continue to be bred in Brandenburg: but it is under such discouragements. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... thankful to salute his native land, or feel the solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure, ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony—an ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer on its back—he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... interested the bears became. Here the crows and gulls had not had time to capture all the prizes. There were savoury blue-shelled mussels clinging under the tips of the rocks; plump, spiral whelks between the oozy tresses of the seaweed; orange starfish and bristly sea-urchins in the shallow pools. All these dainties had shells that the cub's young teeth could easily crush, and they yielded meaty morsels that made beetles and grubs seem very meagre fare. Moreover, in the salty bitter ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... off his cap, and while the crescendo nodding of his bristly head seems to brush the night, he adds: "I've mended him his purse. It had become percolated. I've put him a patch on that cost me thirty centimes, and I've resewn the edge with braid, and all the lot. They're expensive, them jobs. Well, when I open my mouth to talk about that matter of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... crown'd his wishes with a son, But two fair daughters heir'd his state and throne. To him Apollo (wondrous to relate! But who can pierce into the depths of fate?) Had sung—'Expect thy sons on Argos' shore, A yellow lion and a bristly boar.' This, long revolved in his paternal breast, Sat heavy on his heart, and broke his rest; 550 This, great Amphiaraus! lay hid from thee, Though skill'd in fate and dark futurity. The father's care and prophet's art were vain, For thus did ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... light and the shade, and as it translated into polishings and rough hewings and granulations and every variety of cutting, the texture of flesh, of hair, and of drapery; of the blonde hair and flesh of children, the coarse flesh and bristly hair of old men, the draperies of wool, of linen, and of brocade. The sculptors of Antiquity took a beautiful human being—a youth in his perfect flower, with limbs trained by harmonious exercise and ripened by exposure to ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... point—are you so entirely sure that she is a dangerous maniac? That is what I want to ask you—whether there isn't a possibility, however remote, that a mistake may conceivably have been made? Please don't misunderstand me," she interjected quickly, seeing how he—already stiff and bristly—had at her words stiffened and bristled still more. "I do not mean to intimate that anything unethical has been done. In fact I am quite sure that everything has been quite ethical. And I am not questioning your professional ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... to aim uncertainly for his face. Did they just touch, with exquisite contact, his bristly chin, or was it a divine illusion? ... She blushed in a very marked manner. He blinked, and his happy blinking seemed to say: "Only wills drawn by me are genuine.... Didn't I tell you Mr. Moze was not ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... table scratching his bristly head and looking the picture of ludicrous bewilderment. I watched him and meanwhile debated whether or not I should take the opportunity to knock him down. That was undoubtedly the proper course. But I could not bring myself to do it. A spirit of wild mischief ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... right to call me an idjit," said the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantryman. He was an aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly black ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; 620 His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret; His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes; Being mov'd, he strikes whate'er is in his way, And whom he strikes ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... see the fine old hall, with its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... eyes betrayed excitement. Like most Sikhs, he can stand looking straight in front of him and take in every detail of his surroundings; with his khaki sepoy uniform perfect down to the last crease, and his great black bristly beard groomed until it shone, he might have been ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... of the bristly, manlike fish when I opened my eyes and glanced through the walls. It was not one monster then, but many that had brought us to their lair. Abruptly, as though a signal had been given, they all streamed back toward the mouth of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... She had accompanied her husband to Switzerland, but cursed her lot, and was always longing to be back in France. When I remarked that it must be some consolation to live in so lovely a place, she interrupted me with the most violent protests. A beautiful place! This! The steep mountain, the bristly fir-trees and pine-trees, the snow on the top and the lake deep down below—anything uglier it would be hard to conceive. No fields, no pasture-land, no apple-trees! No indeed! If she had to mention a country that really was beautiful, it was Normandy. There was plenty of food for ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... treasures of the deep that region is certainly rich; for the Upper and Lower Sea meet there. The exormiston[842], a sort of king among fishes, with bristly nostrils and a milky delicacy of flavour, is found in these waters. In stormy weather it is tossed about on the top of the waves, and seems to be too tired or too indolent to seek a refuge in the deeper water[843]. No other fish can be ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... uncertainty as to whether they should remain or run. But the suspense was soon over, for the nearer bushes parted suddenly and out upon the tote-road floundered an immense moose, his bulbous nose wagging, his bristly mane twitching, his ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... uninhabited, his first care was to supply it with inmates, and, having purchased a couple of fine pigs, he set off homewards with his bargains comfortably lodged in his cart. Upon arriving at Buenos Ayres, a part of the harness broke, down went the cart, and out shot Hudson and his bristly companions backwards; but unfortunately falling upon one of the poor animals, he crushed him to death. This was bad, Hudson looked blank, as who does not upon perceiving Dame Fortune playing him foul? and woeful was it indeed to witness death amongst his live stock; in this dilemma ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... serrulata flore-pleno and C. Sieboldii).—China, 1822. This is one of the most desirable of the small-growing and double-flowered Cherries. It is of neat growth, with short, stout branches that are sparsely furnished with twigs, and smooth, obovate, pointed leaves, bristly serrated on the margins. Flowers double and white at first, but afterwards tinged with pink, freely produced and of good, lasting substance. P. paniculata Watereri is a handsome variety that most probably may be ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... walked just above the reach of the jostling bristly backs, and our own heads all but grazed the low ceiling of the level. To economize power the lights were dim. Despite the masterful achievement of German cleanliness and sanitation there was a permeating odour, a mingling of natural and synthetic smells, which added to the gloom of semi-darkness ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... the light, the hideousness, not the grace and serenity of old age, was revealed. His white hair, thin and half-combed, straggled over the dark-red, purple-veined skin of his head; his cheeks were flabby bags of bristly, wrinkled leather; his mouth was a sunken, irregular slit, losing itself in the hanging folds at the corners, and even the life, gathered into his small, restless gray eyes, was half quenched under the red and heavy edges of the lids. The third and fourth fingers of his hands were crooked upon the ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... a funny, bristly-looking ball, which moved and rustled and squirmed about, and yet for the life of him the little dog, Jock, could not make out ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... is over!" said Marat, resting his bristly head on the back of his velvet arm-chair. "Now we will listen to the music a little, and look ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... correct, trotting off in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man,—who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... sit still and be shot, Mas'r Harry, for you know what a cur I always was; and I thought it a pity to sink the canoe in case you, if you were alive, or Mas'r Landell, might come back to look for it. So I made up my mind to the last, being bristly, and, with my monkey up, I dashed ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... men beside their station took, The maidens with them, and with these the cook; When one huge wooden bowl before them stood, Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food; With bacon, mass saline, where never lean Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen; When from a single horn the party drew Their copious draughts of heavy ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... Secretary of State, Herrfurth, who was reputed to be well informed, particularly in statistics, should instruct him about internal questions. The Prince agreed and invited Herrfurth to lunch, but afterwards told Bismarck he could not stand him, "with his bristly beard, his dryness and tediousness." Could Bismarck suggest some one else? The Chancellor mentioned Privy Councillor von Brandenstein. The Prince did not object, had the Baron several times to meals, but paid so little attention to his explanations that ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... ESCUTCHEON COW indicates bastards, by a streak of hair at the right of the vulva (fig. 19). When that ascending hair is coarse and bristly, it is a sure evidence that ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... sage-bush of a beard, Wherein an Attic owl might roost—a trail Of bristly hair—that, honor'd and unshear'd, Grew downward like old women and cow's tail; Being a sign of age—some gray appear'd, Mingling with duskier brown its warnings pale; But yet, not so poetic as when Time Comes like Jack Frost, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... with him, but he was very kind and fatherly to every one else, and Jay was rather fond of him. He was about fifty, and anything but beautiful. Also the C.O.S. would not have admired him. But I believe he did a good deal of thinking inside that bristly head of his. ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... feet but rags of all sorts, their consternation was extreme. They looked terrified at the sight of those unfortunate soldiers, as they defiled before them, with lean carcasses, faces black with dirt, and hideous bristly beards, unarmed, shameless, marching confusedly, with their heads bent, their eyes fixed on the ground and silent, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... noise as of iron, and, if you listened more closely, a clanking of chains was heard, first of all from a distance, and afterward hard by. Presently a spectre used to appear, an ancient man sinking with emaciation and squalor, with a long beard and bristly hair, wearing shackles on his legs and fetters on his hands, and shaking them. Hence the inmates, by reason of their fears, passed miserable and horrible nights in sleeplessness. This want of sleep was followed by disease, and, their terrors increasing, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... to his jaws; but he did not appear to have got much beyond this preliminary step to learning; and, in spite of his beard, his honest English accent came out, as his jolly English face looked forth from behind that fierce and bristly decoration, perfectly good-humored and unmistakable. We try our best to look like foreigners, but we can't. Every Italian mendicant or Pont Neuf beggar knows his Englishman in spite of blouse, and beard, and slouched hat. "There is a peculiar high-bred ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... thus for about a quarter of an hour when Marechal reappeared. Behind him came a stout thickset man of heavy build, and gorgeously dressed. His face, surrounded by a bristly dark brown beard, and his eyes overhung by bushy eyebrows, gave him, at the first glance, a harsh appearance. But his mouth promptly banished this impression. His thick and sensual lips betrayed voluptuous tastes. A disciple of Lavater or Gall would have found ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... rest, were borne upon horses whiter than the bleached snow; {and} both were brandishing the points of their lances, poised in the air, with a tremulous motion. They would have inflicted wounds, had not the bristly {monster} entered the shady wood, a place penetrable by neither weapons nor horses. Telamon pursues him; and, heedless in the heat of pursuit, falls headlong, tripped up by the root of a tree. While Peleus[65] is lifting him up, the Tegeaean damsel fits a swift arrow to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... grey, with a slight ferruginous tint; darker near head and on shoulders; underneath and on the inside of the limbs pale yellowish, with a darker shade of orange or golden yellow on the breast and belly. The crown of the head is densely covered with bristly hairs, regularly disposed and somewhat elongated on the vertex so as to resemble a cap, whence the name. Along the forehead is a superciliary crest of long black bristles, directed outwardly; whiskers ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... magistrate came into the room. He was a plump and pink little man, with very bright eyes. His bristly hair stood up straight all over his head, giving it the appearance of a broad, dapple-grey clothes-brush. He appeared to be of the opinion that Nature had given the world the toothbrush as a model of what a moustache should be; and his own was ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... the harsh rings of black hair, now grizzled with age, which clustered tightly over his head, except where they had retreated from his deeply seamed and wrinkled forehead, were the crinkled flow above her smooth white brow; and the line of the bristly tufts that overhung his eyes was the same as that of the low arches above hers. Her complexion was from her mother; his skin was dusky yellow; but they had the same mouth, and hers showed how sweet his mouth must have been in his youth. His eyes, deep sunk in their ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... with the negligent lounging air of the hotel foyer, he stared at you, this Mr. R. Gordon Carson, impudently almost, very much at his ease. Narrow head, high forehead, thin hair, large eyes, a great protruding nose, a thin chin, smooth-shaven, yet with a bristly complexion,—there he was, the man from an Iowa farm, the man from the Sioux Falls court-house, the man from Omaha, the man now fully ripe from Chicago. Here was no class, no race, nothing in order; a feature ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... pocket. Neither did he appear in public with a bowie knife down his bootleg. Not being a Mexican, he did not carry a knife, and besides he always wore congress gaiters. Owing to the fact that he was a large florid sandy person, with a freckled bristly neck and a singularly direct fearless manner of looking at his man with eyes that were small, sunken, baleful and rather piggy, the exigencies of Mr. Hennage's profession had never even warranted recourse ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... of which particulars concern any reasonable mortal, looking at a Foxglove, in the smallest degree. Whether hairs which he can't see are glandular or bristly,—whether the green knobs, which are left when the purple bells are gone, are divided into two lobes or two hundred,—and whether the style is split, like a snake's tongue, into two lobes, or like a rogue's, into ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... rugged, scraggy, or scabrous. Now frequently a man's face or head is rough because unshaved or uncombed; also the fur of an animal is rough. Hence the term could be used for unkempt, disheveled, shaggy, hairy, coarse, bristly. "The child ran its hand over its father's rough cheek" and "The bear had a rough coat" are sentences that even the most unimaginative mind can understand. We speak of rough timber because its surface has not been planed or made smooth. We ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... atrocious: it is inconceivable that a handsome woman should become so fearful a hag; the luxuriant hair is lost, and she takes no pains to conceal her grey baldness, the eye loses its light, the enchanting down of the upper lip turns to a bristly moustache; the features harden, grow coarse and vulgar; and the countenance assumes a rapacious expression, so that she appears a bird of prey; and her strident voice is like the shriek of vultures. It is easily comprehensible that ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... Corporal Dowdall were encouraged at seeing a man who looked like a gentleman and bore none of the traditional marks of the prize-fighter. His head was not cropped to the point of bristly baldness, his nose was unbroken, his eyes well opened and unblackened, his ears unthickened, his body untattooed. He had the white skin, small trim moustache, high-bred features, small extremities, and general appearance ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... more bristly; and however much used in repairing a structure, would not be required in ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... grunt, a stoutly-built man who might have been of any age, though he could not have been very young, judging from his bristly greyish whiskers, was also busily occupied, but in ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... astonishment Roger stared as three men in uniform filed into the room and stood at attention. Two wore the regulation dress of sergents-de-ville, the third was clearly of superior rank. He was an aggressive, youngish fellow with a sharp, sallow face and a black, bristly moustache, cut very short. He began by eyeing Roger all over with a sort of dark suspicion, then addressed ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... disgust. It has six feet, two eyes, and a sort of sting, proboscis, or sucker, with which it pierces the skin, and sucks the blood. The skin of the louse is hard and transparent, with here and there several bristly hairs: at the end of each leg are two claws, by which it is enabled to lay hold of the hairs, on which it climbs. There is scarcely any animal known to multiply so fast as this unwelcome intruder: from an experiment of Lieuenhoek, a louse in ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown

... grass, sometimes starring the mossy mats of mealy-plum with the pinky-white of its blooms. The mealy-plum itself shows faint coral edging of pink young buds, and here and there a thistle plant, stemless as yet, looks like a green and bristly starfish in the grass. Isolated red cedars on this wind-swept down grow round balls of dense green foliage four or five feet in diameter, looking as if it needed but a blow of an axe at the butt to send them rolling down wind like big tumble ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... swim over to his isle. Whistle in hand he watched, his boat well ready, His men low-crouched around him, swarthy faces Grim-chinned upon the taffrail, muttering oaths That trampled down the fear i' their bristly throats, While at their sides a dreadful hint of steel Sent stray gleams to the stars. But little heed Had Drake of all that menaced him, though oft Some wandering giant, belching from the feast, All blood-besmeared, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... 19th, 1747, the Chevalier comes in sight of the Place; scans a little the frowning buttresses, bristly with guns; the dumb Alps, to right and left, looking down on him and it. Chevalier de Belleisle judges that, however difficult, it can and must be possible to French valor; and storms in upon it, huge and furious (20,000, or if needful 30,000);—but is torn into ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is found to be unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged—never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all political rights—and even my minor proposal to put the other end of the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it to charcoal ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... around and saw that Don Mike was busy with the latigo, so she leaned down, drew her arm around the astounded Conway's neck, and implanted on his ruddy, bristly cheek a kiss as soft—so Bill Conway afterward described ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... in friendship and purpose as few people are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce, blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband) prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back street; one of those houses—I doubt not, now tenanted by millionaires who ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... darker and harder stone (I think, not serpentine, but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of ages that I could not be certain) is used for the capitals of the western door, which are especially elaborate in their sculpture;—two devilish apes, or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly moustaches and edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands impertinently on their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes near them; but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except of some variegated tiles ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... to Katrina. And now the two of them came near taking to their heels; for, sure enough, propped against the stone and almost covered with rim frost sat a giant troll, with a bristly ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... aged bullfinch—a cock. I remember," she broke off, "an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a separate pot. Once in a hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt said. But she died before that happened—" We told her to keep to the point. "Well," she resumed, "when Professor Hobkin was ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... cities; for a boar so vast Might not be vanquish'd by the power of few, And many to their funeral piles he sent. 680 Then raised Diana clamorous dispute, And contest hot between them, all alike, Curetes and AEtolians fierce in arms The boar's head claiming, and his bristly hide. So long as warlike Meleager fought, 685 AEtolia prosper'd, nor with all their powers Could the Curetes stand before the walls. But when resentment once had fired the heart Of Meleager, which ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. "Am I a burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three-days' growth of bristly beard on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and let me grease the bit, so I won't wake up your mamma, who is lying down with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia who has been faithless to ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... not refer so much to the actual process of being shaved. Indeed there is something restful and soothing to the average male adult in the feel of a sharp razor being guided over a bristly jowl by a deft and skillful hand, to the accompaniment of a gentle grating sound and followed by a sensation of transient silken smoothness. Nor do I refer to the barber's habit of conversation. After all, a barber is human—he has to talk to somebody, and it might as well be ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... doubtless by the merest of accidents, we emerged from the true oasis of orderly fruit trees and vegetables; the soil became sandy and uneven, with palms sprouting up in isolated clusters amid tamarisks and bristly reeds. The stream, meanwhile, continued to divide and subdivide into smaller rivulets. After a good deal of walking on this kind of ground, we finally reached the head of the waters—the eye, as the Arabs poetically call a fountain, alluding to its liquid purity, its genial ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... suddenly. His square, bristly, grim jaw hardened and stiffened, so dear to him were all his stubborn convictions and grizzly, ancient feuds. But he bestirred himself to cause information to be conveyed to Bruce Gilhooley of his ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... entered—a decrepit man who, although numbering only thirty-five years, looked much older. With one arm he leaned on the shoulder of a tall and graceful youth, while his other rested on a crutch. His hair was white, close-cropped, and bristly, his beard grey and shaggy, his eye dark blue, his forehead spacious, and his nose aquiline, but crooked; while his under lip was heavy and hanging, the lower jaw projecting so far beyond the upper, that he could with difficulty bring his shattered teeth together, ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... had beheld thus far. He was thickset, and burned to the color of a ripe olive; his long, drooping mustaches, tobacco-stained at the centre, were bleached at the extremities to a hempen hue. His bristly hair was cut short, and stood aggressively erect upon a bullet head, his clothes were soiled and greasy beneath a gray coating of dust. A pair of alert, lead- blue eyes and a certain facility of movement belied the drawl that marked ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... man flashed back a trench that was fairly bristly with machine guns. Then they asked other questions, but we did not reply. We laid low and said nothing, for you can take it from me, mister, that a real spy is a man of few words, and playing with a flashlight in enemy lines is not exactly ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips



Words linked to "Bristly" :   armed, ill-natured, bristle, bristliness



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